For Honor open beta starts February 9th

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Knights vs. Vikings vs. Samurai stabfest For Honor [official site] will hold a four-day open beta test shortly before launch next month, Ubisoft announced today. From February 9th through 12th, all and sundry will be able to stab each other across a variety of modes. This announcement comes after a closed beta test last weekend and, er, a cheeky little leak giving the news away.

The open beta will offer the 1v1 Duel mode, the 2v2 Brawl, 4v4 Dominion, and the new 4v4 respawnless Elimination. It’ll also continue the War of Factions metagame whatsit offering beta players rewards in the full game. What some of y’all said about the closed beta has me curious enough to make time for the beta.

Here, this trailer gives a brief rundown of what’s in the beta (and shows lots of stabbing):

The full game, which will launch on February 14th, contains singleplayer gubbins as well as all this online stabbing. It’ll cost £39.99/59,99€/$59.99.

For Honor broke into last week’s Steam charts with pre-orders alone, which is pretty impressive for a game still a fortnight from launch. I guess the closed beta convinced a fair few stabfans.

I wasn’t a fan on the Friday but by Sunday I was in withdrawal. I had a great time once I had a chance to try out some of the classes and once they patched the Dominion matchmaking to start correctly. I think it probably appeals more than traditional fighting games because there is less of a focus on 1v1 duels, which can be more intimidating than being part of a crowd. I dropped the price from 40 quid to 32 quid with some kind of currency I had on my Ubi account, so I went for it in the end.

Same here! Can’t wait to get my hands on the game again. The fighting system is really something fresh! Also excited for the 2p coop campaign. I’ll be buying it probably, but never preorder! Patiently waiting for the reviews to come out.

I’m a little dissappointed though that the 4v4 modes is not a proper tug of war. If one team has captured the B point, they’ll just stand around, waiting to be attacked…

Yup, peer to peer networking is almost a deal-breaker for me. I think I might have finished 3 or 4 PvP games over the course of the beta, the rest of them either just disconnected or kept “resynchronizing” until the game froze. The “technical test” back in December worked better for me in that respect.

What’s weird is that I never had ANY problems in the PvAI mode, even queuing with friends. I guess maybe in that case it always has the party leader act as host? I have a really solid machine and gigabit fiber Internet, so I don’t mind being host at all.

Whether I pick up the game really depends on reviews of how well the networking works on release.

I really want this game to be a success because there certainly aren’t games with good close combat systems let alone in multiplayer.

I’m not sure it’s going to do that well though. The combat system is fantastic (though some have said it’s a bit unresponsive at times, had a few niggles myself in the beta)
but that’s all it’s got.

Duels are fun as that’s where the fighting system really shines. In 2v2 and dominion it’s more problematic.

Basically in any mode other than duel players can gang up on you. That’s fine, it’s a valid tactic and fair enough. The problem is if you’re the one ganged up on you’re almost certainly going to die. What’s more when this is happening neither you nor your opponents will really see much of what makes the combat system so good. If you can get a 1v1 fight in those modes (and you frequently will) they’re great the game feels fun but as soon as you encounter enemies who group up it sucks all the fun out of it – for me at any rate.

Also I didn’t find Dominion – the 4vs4 point capture mode – that thrilling. All the maps available in the beta felt kind of samey. The art and world design is gorgeous but mechanically they didn’t seem interesting, just try to capture and hold 3 points whilst a load of AI soldiers fight in the middle. I’d rather have had some kind of siege mode where the objectives you had to capture made thematic sense – say capture a gatehouse to force the gates open whilst the defending players try to keep you out

The characters work well, all capable and all play differently even within the same class At release there will be 12 but I’m not sure that’s enough to keep me interested long term. More are coming out as paid DLC BUT they can be earned by in game currency – the same way Rainbow 6 siege works.

I’d be willing to forgive a lot of my worries if the single player campaign is really good but this is a multiplayer focused game so I’m not expecting great things.

For all my worries For Honor does have great potential, I just hope it does well enough to merit continuous support. That said if it doesn’t initially I suspect they’ll take it the route of rainbow 6 siege and create super cheap starter edition.

“The problem is if you’re the one ganged up on you’re almost certainly going to die.”

Wrong. The system is quite well developed for you to be able to defend yourself against multiple attackers. In fact, it’s -easier- to block people you aren’t targetting, because you just point your block where they’re standing. This also boosts your Revenge meter a lot faster– You revenge mode, you probably kill your target, you move on.

That said, you’re still more likely to die, but, far, far from almost certain.

First, having the odds stacked against you 1v2 seems pretty fair to me. If the other guy managed to drop your partner, yeah… they get the advantage.

Second, there is a “perfect guard” style mechanic in which if you block one attack, you’ll block all subsequent attacks for a period of time (1 second I think?). In this sense, you can *mostly* focus on blocking just one guy… and since you are now blocking twice as many attacks, you’re building revenge about twice as fast… and revenge seriously gives you a big advantage.

Third, given the two points above, 1v2 is actually super hype. Yeah the odds are against you. No it isn’t impossible, so when you manage to hold your own (or more likely, my teammate since I suck) and even sometimes win, it is “stand up and yell” levels of excitement. Watching my buddy wisely put his back to a wall and proceed to beat his opponent and my half-dead opponent (I wasn’t totally useless) was fantastic and super fun.

How can something be in Beta from 9th-12th when it’s released on the 14th. Sure, I suppose this will allow for day one patches and the like. As far as I was aware games go gold about a month before release and no changes can be made.
The joy of getting games out regardless of their state and patching after the fact, eh?

I think it’s a courageous move from them. They could have just kept it on themselves and let hyped people buy it, when it’s released.
Now everyone can try it and buy it afterwards, if they want to play it more. It shows that they trust their product enough to endanger their sales. I’m no dev, but if I was, I would make sure that my game is pretty damn polished before letting everyone to try it for free just days before release.
I think this kind of marketing should be cheered on. Your mudslinging feels kinda out of place…

I don’t think I was mudslinging. I guess it’s about terminology in this instance. A Beta is designed for testing and finding/reporting issues so the dev team can fix them before release. Yes, it’s often in a finished state, or as close to as they hope so it can be released. However, this is 2 days before release. That would mean it’s a Demo, not a Beta.

I do really hope it’s ‘bloody’ awesome too, and playing the ‘Demo’ will show evey one how great the game is.

My problems with this game are the peer to peer connection, which i don’t understand in a multiplayer focused game and then it’s price. Honestly, 60 euros, for just a mp game (i’m 80% sure the campaign will suck), with peer2peer connection? WAY overpriced.
I hope they won’t do bullshit dlc’s to it as well that will just split the playerbase.

I honestly cannot understand how they are still so adamant on keeping such a high price (with no dedicated servers), when multiplayer games live or die by their availability to as many players as possible.

Depending on the gameplay 40 euros might be reasonable. Doesn’t change the fact that normally it would be 60 on steam.

Didn’t know they said that they’re going R6 route. That would be rather good i think. Depending on how hard unlocking new characters would be (if it’s too hard it would be rather sucky for a game you already payed for, that is supposed to be competitive).

Otherwise P2P might be good in 1v1 (depending on who it connects you with), but i still don’t understand why they wouldn’t have some dedicated servers at least for 4v4. There are bound to be problems (like i’ve seen a lot of players mention).

And sorry but 3-4 hour campaign i see as a waste of time, just there to justify a higher price. It really serves no purpose imo. If it was at least 10 hours and you could repeat it with other classes in different conditions etc. then maybe.